


Bright Things in Dark Places

by izzyok



Category: The Winner's Trilogy - Marie Rutkoski
Genre: F/M, Kinda, adultery suggestion, diplomatic shennanigans, post winner's curse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 14:53:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2625812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzyok/pseuds/izzyok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Herrani are a people of subtle gestures -  little gestures, three fingers on a wrist or a palm placed purposefully to the side of one’s face. Their rooms are laid out with the care  and intricacy of her father’s military schematics. The variety of Herrani utensils nearly rivals the number of Valorian weapons and, Kestrel suspects, can be applied even more widely. The Herrani are a people a of myriad nuances, dancing on strings set to a perfect tune.</p>
<p>      The Valorians are not</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bright Things in Dark Places

**Author's Note:**

> Posted originally at arin-of-herran.tumblr.com

The Herrani are a people of subtle gestures - little gestures, three fingers on a wrist or a palm placed purposefully to the side of one’s face. Their rooms are laid out with the care and intricacy of her father’s military schematics. The variety of Herrani utensils nearly rivals the number of Valorian weapons and, Kestrel suspects, can be applied even more widely. The Herrani are a people a of myriad nuances, dancing on strings set to a perfect tune.

The Valorians are not. They jump bulls to prove their right to society. They fall on their swords. They do not pray to Gods for doing so would be to suggest the need to pray. No, the Valorians are not a people of subtle gestures. They are a people of demonstration. 

The fete is a demonstration, an elaborate, ornate, gaudy show of peace between Herran and Valoria. Symbolically, the party is held in Arin’s villa which had been Herrani and then Valorian and then Herrani-Valorian, now that they were new citizens. The building bore the indignities with grace, still lovely with it’s fine panelling and shell-like architecture. The weapons had been pulled down and instruments had been put in their proper places but a Valorian banner hangs outside the door to better appease the peacocks from the capital. They are too Valorian to see the little gestures that display Herrani contempt. No one’s feet have been washed, not even the prince’s. Kestrel doubts they even know of the custom. This is their home field, a field of mannerisms and subtleties. And Arin is playing them. 

When the ambassador from Valoria’s eastern providences suggest to Arin an alternative trade route that might take twice as long but pick up quite a sum in barbarian slaves, he dances. He answers questions with questions and makes a great show of saying a whole lot without saying anything. The ambassador falls into his cups momentarily satisfied but will realize in the morning that Arin promised nothing, not even the shadow of agreement. Kestrel snorts and traces a flute of champagne with a heavily jeweled finger as she watches the display. Amateur. 

Arin glances up at the sound and there is trickster mirth in his grey eyes. But, as they always do, his liar’s eyes flick to her brow and shutter closed. He does not look at her for all the rest of the meal. Kestrel finds herself a bit further in her cups than she had intended, amused and chagrined to find herself akin to the eastern ambassador. But she is no amateur.

So when the northern ambassador proposes warring on a few vestigial tribesmen now that they are no longer at war with Herran, she goes for his throat. She explains to him, very loudly, very publicly and with exacting details, how irretrievably stupid the notion is. Warring on tundra tribesmen. In Winter. With Eastern revolts to crush and a military spread thin. Kestrel rails against him until her fiancé decides to spare the poor man, requesting Kestrel perform a Valorian march. It’s a distraction and a poorly concealed one at that. But her fingers itch nonetheless and she happily removes the weighty Valorian jewels from her digits. It’s not like she could perform with them on. 

The party - Valorians, in heavy brocade and daggers at the hips, and Herrani, in sumptuous silks with daggers in their smiles - moves to Arin’s music room. The piano is still there. She had considered moving her piano to the capital with her but she couldn’t bear to do it to the poor instrument. It had lost it’s first musician and it’s first two homes, just as Kestrel had lost her two mothers and her two homes. Perhaps, she thought, if her piano remains with Arin, she has not completely lost this home. 

Still, she hates performing for these parties. The Valorians see a pretty little novelty, when she sits at the bench, and the Herrani see a pretender. All of them tend to talk through her pieces. She is made to feel the outsider and she hates the fact that they are right. She was never particularly good at being Valorian. She suspected she never could truly be one since the day she had let Arin weave his clever hands through her hair. Some things could not be cut off. 

But if she was less Valorian for having been touched by Arin, he too was less Herrani for having known her. There is nothing subtle about him when he positions himself besides the piano. There is nothing nuanced about the glares he sends at interrupting commentary. It is a demonstration. It is a Valorian act. 

Kestrel softens at his presence and allows herself some freedom with the music. All Valorian music is intended to be sung - songs for marching to and from battle. The music is blunt and exists in a single voice, no swelling chords or three part harmonies. Arin is still making his demonstration, though. Kestrel allows herself to make a little gesture. The harmony is something like flute music, something like three fingers glancing across a wrist, something like burnt honey. She sees him recognize it, mouth quirking so slightly. 

No one notices the exchange, it is too subtle and too straightforward to be recognized by anyone. They don’t know that Kestrel washes Arin’s feet with soaps and oils hidden beneath the floorboards whenever there is a delegation in the capital. They don’t know that Arin takes such care to wipe the myrrh and gold dust from her brow when they confer in his home. Or how her eyes glance to the bit of exposed collarbone beneath his dress shirt, an offer, a suggestion, a demand. Or how he has held her hair in a warm clutch and murmured against her lips of the only gold worth having. No one knows how they press together, bright in dark places.


End file.
